I dont care about pitch accent

[jrmr50]

Agree, its less that I think pitch accent is unimportant, and more that I’ve got MUCH bigger issues to correct when conversing - like remembering words, using more than 5 grammar points, to stop directly translating weird British sayings into Japanese…

[homa]

@jrmr50

to stop directly translating weird British sayings into Japanese

That one should be perfectly fine!

[jrmr50]

perhaps it’s better expressed as ‘directly translating my weird british english into Japanese’

[cafelatte]

@itoen90

With that said one of the reasons I didn’t focus on pitch until recently is that I focused a LOT on other IMO wayyyyyyyyy bigger pronunciation issues that English speakers have. And these pay wayyyyyy bigger dividends than pitch when it comes to being understood: long vowels, っ spacing, “r” sound after N etc etc. Saying きて instead of きって during speech is a huge problem so many of us do. Even advanced people when you’re trying to speak quickly and remember words and stuff you end up mispronouncing…just basic things.

This is so real- despite the fact Japanese FEELS like it should be easy to pronounce with having only 5 vowel sounds (English has at least 20), I constantly find myself mangling it anyway. One of my recent bad habits is letting my “e” sound slip into “i”, saying things like “onigaishimasu” instead of “onegaishimasu.” Nailing those long and short sounds correctly too is still a work in progress.

[Rukifellth]

I only focus on learning pitch for key words rather than trying to learn it for every word- common words with proper pitch accent>extremely niche word that even a native wouldn’t know the pitch accent for their region. That’s another thing, pitch accent varies by region. I know it’s “iSU” in Tokyo, but where I am it’s “Isu” and that’s the pitch i use because that’s what the people around me use. Plus having no proper pitch accent is easier to understand than someone getting the pitch accent wrong.
Most of the time it’s more headache than it’s worth and unless you’re scripting for a tv show script or something, it’s probably not worth spending too much time on. (as an aside with Dogen, I was watching him when my wife was nearby- I asked her about his pitch accent, she said it’s really good but she can still tell he’s a foreigner by his voice/accent. Take of that what you will.)